STEMCats, sponsored by HHMI, is designed to help students succeed at UK. The program prepares students both academically and socially through participation in FastTrack or FOCUS, research opportunities, and special seminar courses. Students participating in STEMCats will build confidence, enthusiasm, satisfaction and a sense of belonging to UK, and experience a smoother transition to college coursework. This leads to improved performance and higher academic achievement.
After being awarded a grant from the American Association of University Women, philosophy professor Natalie Nenadic is planning research on understanding today’s proliferation of pornography and sexual violence and the role of technology in this development.
Technology in the classroom is often discussed in terms of solving issues of scale—the rise of massively open online courses just being the largest of examples. Perhaps though, technology may serve the most good when it's scaled to student needs.
Psychology Professor Jonathan Golding has found this to be the case in the many classes he teaches. As he has increasing experimented with tools like Facebook and blogs, Golding has found that the most gains come in the small interactions between students, where they learn to deal with themselves on their own terms, as real individuals. The result: a more productive learning environment made more intimate—not less—by the latest technology.
In this podcast, Professor Golding discusses how he uses modern social media platforms like Facebook to change the way his students interact with him and each other while also noting some of the tensions that exist when incorporating technology into the classroom.
One such researcher is Professor Gary Ferland of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Since the late 1970s, he’s been using computer modeling software to carry out experiments that would otherwise be impossible. With his widely used program Cloudy which simulates clouds of interstellar matter out in space and UK’s high-tech supercomputing infrastructure, Ferland and his students have been able to help answer some of the biggest questions facing astronomers as well as society.
UK professors and staff members are invited to the university's second Teaching and Technology Fair this Thursday, Sept. 1, which will be a bigger and better version of last May’s event, according to organizers.
